


Rebuilding

by telm_393



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Found Family, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-04
Updated: 2013-12-04
Packaged: 2018-01-03 10:41:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1069505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telm_393/pseuds/telm_393
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the war, Herc Hansen moves to a nice house in Boston and has trouble moving on. He does his best, though, with the help of the five visitors he gets over the course of a few months. Well, visitors may not be the best word for them, since only one of them actually leaves. (And Tendo still calls almost every night.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [重建](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1539041) by [yuki812](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuki812/pseuds/yuki812)



> This was written for the Pacific Rim Big Bang. Thank you to orangeblitz for the wonderful art, and sherriaisling for betaing. This also fits into my longfic_bingo as an extra for "grief" and "war".

Herc buys the red house in Boston because of some photographs he’s got shoved in a shoebox.

Herc’s the kind of man who doesn’t have much but photographs left, and he kept getting drawn to those of the family vacation to Boston, five years before K-Day. Back when aliens were nothing more than a wild theory.

Angela had loved taking photographs and Herc had always rolled his eyes when she told him to stop moving and smile for the camera.

Now he is so, so glad that he did.

When he flips through the photos from Boston he remembers with aching clarity the way that Chuck had laughed as he ran through parks and paved streets with Herc chasing after him, scared half to death that Chuck was going to get out of his line of sight.

He remembers, vaguely, that they saw a show at some big theater, though he can’t remember the show or the theater, since he fell asleep on Angela’s shoulder for most of it and had the best sleep he’d had in ages. When they got out of the theater it was raining in sheets, and Chuck had looked like he was going to start running and catch his death at any second, so Herc picked him up and held him close, and Angela took a photograph despite the pouring rain, and Herc was almost deliriously _happy._

That, he remembers clearly.

And that’s why, when he’s deciding where he’s going to go and what he’s going to do after the Hong Kong Shatterdome closes, he ends up blowing a sizable chunk of his life savings _buying_ a house.

He tries not to think about how he thought, _Chuck will like this place._

Herc’s never been an impulsive man, but now.

Now he’s got no clue what he’s doing in a house with two too many bedrooms.

But he knows he doesn’t want to leave.

He likes Boston, and it’s expensive but he’s ended up with more money than he knows what to do with—courtesy of too many life insurance policies cashed in and too many wills that were too generous to him and so many salaries that he never spent and the kind of generous bonus earned by helping save the world—so that’s where he is.

Herc lets it be.

He doesn’t go out much. When he does, it’s mostly to take Max for walks, and to go grocery shopping. He doesn’t talk to his neighbors, is standoffish enough that even the friendly ones eventually stop trying to chitchat with him.

He doesn’t want to think about the kind of things they’d want to chitchat about.

The war’s on everybody’s mind, and the last thing Herc wants to talk about is the war.

Herc might not be trying to make friends, but, though he hates to admit it, he is lonely, miserably so. He’s got no family left, and the thought still sends a wave of nausea through him when it doesn’t just make him ache.

Herc is damn tired, but sleep doesn’t come easy to him. He has unpleasant dreams. He knows this, even if he doesn’t remember them in the morning.

Sometimes Herc thinks he really ought to see some kind of therapist, considering that he’s got to be all kinds of fucked in the head by now, but he never follows through on that thought.

The quiet in his house makes him uneasy. He’s too used to the bustling of the Shatterdome around him, to the sound of somebody else’s breathing at night.

When Herc was a kid, he shared a room with Scott.

When he was older, he shared a room—and a bed—with Angela.

And then Scott again, only by then Chuck was in the picture too, sleeping on a mattress on the floor, and then, when Scott was out of the picture, Herc still bunked with Chuck.

Now, Herc wakes up in a bed that’s too big for him just like the house is too big for him.

Max is a blessing, comfort and companionship, but his presence is something like a double edged sword, because sometimes Herc looks at Max and all he can see is Chuck pressing a kiss to the dog’s wrinkled forehead before going off to die.

And sometimes Herc thinks Max is waiting for someone.

Hell, he knows Max is waiting for someone. Chuck.

Chuck’s never coming back, obviously, but there’s no way to explain that to a dog, so Herc watches Max watching the door and it makes something in his chest tug unpleasantly.

Max sleeps on Herc’s bed at night, so at least Herc doesn’t have to be completely alone while he fails to fall asleep, but it’s not the same.

Sharing the house with a dog will never be the same as sharing it with another human being.

Herc starts leaving the television on all the time, giving himself the illusion of human companionship. It’s pathetic, but he can’t really bring himself to mind.

Herc’s not ashamed of himself for grieving.

He’s been grieving someone or another all his adult life. It’s different every time, though, so it’s not like Herc can get used to it.

It’s not like Herc hadn’t thought of Chuck dying. He’d thought about it all the time.

But there was a part of him that assumed that if Chuck died he’d be dead too, that they’d at least die together.

Sometimes, Herc wishes that he and Chuck had been piloting Striker Eureka together, Neural Handshake strong and holding, during Operation Pitfall.

The last stand.

Instead, Herc had been in LOCCENT.

He’s glad Stacker had the chance to go out fighting instead of slowly dying, but sometimes he wishes he’d died like he was supposed to, with his son, or even with his best friend (it’s not like Herc doesn’t think about what would’ve happened if Chuck had been the one with a broken arm, he thinks about it too much), in a Jaeger.

Herc doesn’t want to die. He doesn’t even want to be dead. He’s not too keen on living, but he doesn’t want to off himself.

He just sometimes thinks that he _should_ have died, that the fact that he’s still around is some kind of fluke, because he’s not necessary. He was at least helpful, for a bit, for the six months after the war that the Shatterdome remained operational and he had to assist in wrapping things up, justifying Stacker’s resistance to bureaucrats who didn’t seem quite grateful enough that they’d averted the apocalypse, making the rounds in the press.

Those six months passed quickly, though, in a haze of paperwork and interviews and hearings, in trying his best to keep the emptiness Chuck had left in him in the back of his mind.

And now.

Now, Herc feels like it’s a mistake that by some cruel twist of fate he lived and Chuck and Stacker and the Wei Tang triplets and the Kaidanovskys didn’t.

Because they had futures.

The Wei Tang triplets, the Kaidanovskys—they had each other.

Stacker, he deserved a bit of peace in his life.

Chuck…

Chuck was just a kid.

Herc’s kid.

Now, Herc is not Marshal Hercules Hansen. He’s not Ranger Hercules Hansen.

He’s just Hercules Hansen, a man who’s retired far too early and doesn’t know what to do with himself.

It’s strange that he of all people has gotten this far. He didn’t expect to survive the war, considering that nobody else he loved did, figured he wasn’t meant for peacetime.

But here he is.

Herc’s been a soldier for most of his life, and now he’s just alone, tucked away in Boston safely out of the public eye.

But he’s alive, so he’ll survive.

But nights are still difficult.

Every once in a while, Herc will wake up with his son’s voice ringing so, so loud and clear in his head—

_If you’ve got a shot, you take it._

And he cries every time.

It’s been seven months since the war ended, and it feels so close; so close that sometimes Herc has to remind himself that it’s over. The Kaiju are gone. The Jaegers are gone. Chuck is gone.

It’s been one month since Herc bought this house and settled down, and he wonders if he’ll ever get used to it.

He wonders if he’ll ever be happy again.

These days, Herc only smiles for Max’s benefit.

He feels old, like he ages a year every day.

One early morning, he’s wandering around his house and he’s briefly terrified that this is going to be the rest of his life.

But later that day, there’s a knock on the door.

Herc’s sitting on the couch, working on a Sudoku puzzle, television on, Max at his feet, when he hears the persistent knocking. He ignores it, even when Max looks up hopefully.

But then: “Hey, Herc, tell me I’ve got the right house!”

Herc freezes.

Max pants happily, toddling over to the door now that he’s heard a voice.

On the television, a crowd starts cheering.

Herc has known Tendo Choi for years; he would know that voice anywhere.

He opens the door.

Tendo, hair ridiculous and poofy as usual, thumbs hooked in his suspenders, stands in front of him, smiling a wide, lopsided smile.

Briefly, Herc smiles back without even thinking about it.

He lets Tendo inside and waits by the door as Tendo looks curiously around the living room. “Nice digs,” Tendo offers.

“How’d you find me?” Herc asks.

Tendo grins. “C’mon, Herc, it’s not like you were hiding.”

Herc concedes to that, shrugging. He guesses that, even if he tried his best to stay nondescript, with some digging, anybody could find him. He’s done a damn good job at staying out of the public eye, though, since people seem to accept that he’s retired to a quiet life. It’s a miracle, really, how well he’s faded into the woodwork.

“How’ve you been?” Tendo asks, offhand even if it’s a loaded question, considering everything. Tendo’s always been good at sounding casual, no matter what he’s saying.

Herc shrugs. “Alright.” He guesses it’s true. He hasn’t been happy, but he hasn’t been too miserable either.

Tendo smiles a bit grimly. He doesn’t quite believe Herc, and it shows. Even so, all he says is, “Good.”

“And you?” Herc asks, not just out of politeness. He’s _missed_ Tendo like he misses an awful lot of people, and at least Tendo’s still alive to miss him back.

“I’ve been good,” Tendo says genuinely.

“How’s the baby?”

“Healthy, happy. We’ve been blessed.”

Herc nods and smiles a bit, glad somebody’s doing well for themselves. There’s a twisting in his chest when he thinks about Tendo’s little boy, because he almost immediately starts thinking of his little boy, who isn’t little anymore but never really got the chance to grow up. Twenty-one years isn’t much time at all.

Kids shouldn’t die before their parents, and Herc fervently hopes that Tendo will never have to know what it feels like to lose a child.

He swallows painfully and starts to say something—he doesn’t know what, anything—when Tendo speaks. “Well,” Tendo says cheerfully. “Tomorrow I’m lecturing at Harvard about my war experiences or whatever, and I’ve been on an airplane for _way_ too long, so where do I sleep?”

Herc blinks, catching up quickly and raising his eyebrows. “You didn’t get a hotel room?”

Tendo snorts. “Should I have? I mean, I’ve got you,” he cracks a softer smile. “I told Alison a friend was gonna put me up, if he had the space. And you got the space, so.”

Herc feels himself smile again, an involuntary lift of one side of his mouth. He jerks his head vaguely in the direction of the stairs. “I got two rooms that are free, came furnished. Choose one.”

Tendo grins and claps Herc’s shoulder. “Knew I could count on you!”

Herc _is_ pretty consistent. He watches Tendo stumble up the stairs—he really is tired—and he _hears_ it too.

And hearing the sound of shoes that aren’t his making the stairs creak—for a second, this place really feels like home.

But Tendo’s going to leave, so Herc’s really just kidding himself.

Tendo promises to call, at least, but Herc doesn’t hold out much hope for that (everyone promises to call, it’s a nice way of saying _sorry I’ll never see you again_ ).

Tendo drags Herc around Boston for a day after his lectures, sightseeing. Herc hasn’t seen most of the things he encounters out there before, but he doesn’t really care about them. Tendo figures his apathy about the landmarks is because he’s already seen it all, since he lives in Boston. Herc doesn’t correct him, doesn’t say that after the Jaegers, not all that much impresses him anymore.

They eat out at some sandwich place. Tendo enjoys it very much. Herc likes the food well enough.

Herc spends most of the day walking with Tendo around a city that he doesn’t think will ever feel like _his_ , not like Sydney did. He’s glad for that, really. It’s silly to get attached to a place, it just causes pain.

Herc chats with Tendo about how the former members of the Resistance he knew best are doing, how life is in New York, how Tendo’s kid is, how the marriage is faring, literature, even. The one thing they acknowledge but never quite talk about is the war, the people they’ve lost.

Neither of them wants to talk about the war. Herc can see it in Tendo’s eyes, he’s haunted too. The war casts a pall over his life too, even if he tries to compartmentalize like he did for almost eleven years. That’s why Herc feels so comfortable with Tendo, he guesses.

Tendo actually gets it. He gets why Herc wants to forget the war but never will, because he’s got the same thing going on in his head. Maybe in different ways, maybe he’s dealing with it better because he’s got his family, maybe he’s not, but they’re both survivors of a fight that they both witnessed up close. Herc saw Jaegers fall and knew that the pilots didn’t have a chance in hell. Tendo heard them die.

Herc smiles more when Tendo’s around. He doesn’t laugh. Laughter doesn’t come to him easily. He doesn’t talk much. He prefers to listen.

Herc’s the happiest he’s been in months, when he’s with Tendo. He doesn’t feel so numb. He feels Tendo’s friendship and it soothes some of the constant aching, it thaws something inside of him just for a little while.

It’s not that hard to say goodbye, in the end. Tendo’s been around for three days, and they’ve been three good days.

Herc takes all the good days he can get, even if he knows they’ll be over. Sometimes he wonders if things are ever really going to be better, if he’ll have more good days than bad.

Mostly he doesn’t wonder, because he’s sure he knows the answer.

Tendo and Herc hug, and the warm human touch makes some of Herc’s tenseness go away for just a few seconds.

“I’ll call,” Tendo says as he pets Max before he gets into the taxi idling outside of Herc’s house.

“I’ll hold you to that,” Herc throws back, and Tendo grins crookedly and throws Herc a peace sign, and then the taxi’s gone.

For a little while after that, Herc feels almost peaceful for the first time since the war ended.

At night, he wakes up with Chuck’s voice ringing in his head as it does too much.

_Old man—_

Herc’s face is sticky with tears, and when he goes into the bathroom to wash it, he doesn’t look in the mirror.

He ends up stumbling back to bed, burrowing under the covers, listening to Max’s breathing and remembering the way Max always slept practically next to Chuck’s head.

His chest aches in a way that exhausts him, but he can’t get back to sleep, no matter how hard he tries.

He just lies in bed until the sun spills through his window, and then tells himself to get up.

He doesn’t want to.

Mostly, he just wants to lie there all day and think about his son and his best friend and his wife and the way that he will never see them again, never touch them again, never hear them breathe again, even when they somehow feel so close.

Herc can still feel Chuck, flitting through the edges of his brain, agitated and passionate and so _bright_.

He doesn’t stay in bed all day, though, because he’s used to getting up at 0600 hours and if he stops doing that it’s just another thing that the war’s taken from him, and there’s no point to torturing himself. Even if the memories still rush in sometimes, unbidden, and break his heart every time, he shouldn’t get lost in them, not like that.

_Don’t chase the RABIT, Herc,_ Stacker’s voice says, identical to how it sounded during their first Drift.

Herc didn’t chase the RABIT.

He never has, and he’s not going to start now.

So he gets up, brushes his teeth, changes into exercise clothes, and goes out jogging with Max, ignoring anybody he may see.

An hour later, he’s back at home, and he takes a shower. Changes into civilian clothes. His clothes.

And then he does what he does every day. He reads. He keeps the TV on, tuned to a sports station that is playing some boring footie thing that Herc doesn’t care about or understand. He eats lunch, which is always a sandwich since he can’t cook and he doesn’t go out. He takes Max out.

He gets ready for bed.

He goes to sleep.

The next day is the same, except at eight o’ clock at night Tendo calls like he said he would.

Herc actually half-expected him, which is more credit than he’d give anyone else, but Tendo, like Herc, has always been consistent.

They don’t talk about much, just the weather and how Tendo’s trip home was and how the family is and Tendo says he’ll put Alison on the phone someday but she’s not home right now and he’s reading an interesting book that Herc should check out, and then, after half an hour, they say goodbye and hang up.

Herc’s left with a feeling of relief, because he knows he’s got somebody other than Max, and that’s a comfort.

Tendo calls the next day, and the day after that, and Herc knows that three is a pattern, so he starts factoring Tendo’s nightly phone call into the existence he’s built for himself.

It livens things up a bit.

After two months, Herc gets another knock on the door. He just talked to Tendo, so he knows it can’t be him, so it must be a pizza guy who got the wrong house or missionaries who’re for some reason working after dark, so he doesn’t answer the door even at Max’s whine.

Herc knows one thing: it’s not Chuck.

But the knocking continues and continues, and it’s agitating Max and that annoys Herc more than it should, so he opens the damn door.

The sigh he’s greeted with nearly makes him close the door again, but that wouldn’t be fair.

Mako Mori is dressed in a long black overcoat and black pants. With the splashes of blue still in her hair and her pale skin, she looks like something out of a storybook.

“Herc,” she says. She’s always called him that, because Herc could never stand to be called Ranger Hansen or Hansen-san by Stacker’s kid, and Mako accommodated him, diplomatic even at eleven years old.

Now, at twenty-two, she calls him by the name he told her to call him by as though she’s going to tell him something, but she doesn’t say anything after it.

Mako has always been succinct and thoughtful, not one for talking when she didn’t have anything important to say, like Stacker, but words have rarely failed her. Now, though, she looks slightly lost, and Herc is struck by her youth. She’s always acted like such a grown up, the times when she acted her age were an event, but she’s just a year older than Chuck is.

Than Chuck _was_ , when…

So Mako stands on Herc’s porch and Herc stands on the threshold of his house, and they just look at each other.

Chuck and Mako were never friends, Herc remembers. He remembers that they would get into real knock out drag down fights, and Herc didn’t ever scold Chuck for hitting a girl because it felt unfair, since Mako gave as good as she got and he didn’t think that she or Stacker would appreciate him bringing up her gender when scolding Chuck for fighting.

They both had explosive tempers. Mako’s still got one, but she’s learned how to control herself, over the years. Chuck never quite harnessed his. He’ll never get the chance, now.

But even though Mako and Chuck fought, they had some kind of connection that led to them spending time together despite the fact that they didn’t particularly like each other. As two kids almost the same age who had both been through the hell that was an attack by the Kaiju, and who had survived and felt bad about it, who had lost family—they became allies because those similarities didn’t allow them to be enemies.

Mako stands tall, and biological child or not, she resembles Stacker in so many ways—the steel in her eyes, the pride in her stance, the determined set of her jaw—that it makes Herc feel like someone got in a good hit to his solar plexus.

“May I come in?” Mako asks, and her eyes may have steel but they’re also haunted, grief and pain there plain as day because Herc’s seen something like that look in the mirror.

Herc nods, still unable to tear his eyes away from her. She wanders around his mostly barren living room like Tendo did, and eventually sits on the soft dark blue couch, posture rigid with military discipline.

Herc sits next to her. It’s easier to be with her now that he doesn’t have to look at her, and he figures it’s the same for her. He still doesn’t know what to say.

_I’m sorry I can’t look at you, you should know I still care for you._

_I loved your father, he was more special to me than my brother could ever be._

_I’m sorry I didn’t die with my son and you didn’t at least get a while more with Stacker._

She doesn’t say anything either, and the silence is heavy with words unspoken until Herc finally breaks it. “Where’s Raleigh?”

It’s a valid question, seeing as how in those six months that the PPDC was still active Raleigh and Mako rarely left each other’s side, and Tendo had told him that they were traveling together, something like that.

Mako answers quickly, “He’s in Anchorage. Saying goodbye.”

It’s a bit cryptic, but Herc’s got a pretty good idea of what and who Raleigh’s saying goodbye to. His brother. Alaska.

Herc might have done it with Sydney, if he hadn’t been so busy after its destruction.

Anchorage is where Yancy died. Herc can understand saying goodbye.

“I think he’ll be leaving soon,” Mako says. “And then we will meet up again.”

Herc nods. “Makes sense,” he says gruffly.

“May I stay here?” Mako asks, and it surprises Herc completely.

Herc almost says, _It hurts to look at you._

He says, “Of course,” instead, because Mako’s presence has taken a hold of his heart and squeezed, and it hurts but he doesn’t quite want her to let go. Not entirely.

Mako smiles, small and mysterious but definitely happy. It looks like Stacker’s smile, and Herc’s going to cry tonight, but he’s not going to refuse his best friend’s daughter. He’s not going to refuse her, he cares about her too much to do that.

Herc can take some more pain, if it’s worth it, and Mako is, of course she is.

Herc figures Mako is going to stay the night, but she doesn’t.

Instead, she makes it clear that she’s planning to stay at least a couple weeks longer, bringing over a couple of large suitcases from the hotel she’d been staying in and living out of those.

Herc wonders if those suitcases are all she has, all of the important things, at least. He’d only had four suitcases because he’d packed for Chuck too before remembering that Chuck wouldn’t need a suitcase, and Herc hadn’t had the heart to leave them.

Those suitcases are stuffed into the very back of Herc’s closet, and he hasn’t opened them even though sometimes he wants to, because he’s not ready to see Chuck’s clothes, Chuck’s things, with the knowledge that Chuck will never need them or want them again.

The next night, when Tendo calls, Herc talks to him and then puts him on the phone with Mako.

Tendo makes Mako laugh for the first time Herc’s seen since she first appeared on his doorstep, like Herc had hoped he would.

When Mako hangs up, she looks over at Herc and smiles a bit. “I’m glad he called. I haven’t spoken to him in a month.”

“Well,” Herc says gruffly. “He calls every night at eight, so you’ll get to speak to him again soon.”

Mako smiles at the news.

They go to the couch to read after that, and Herc can’t get out of the habit of turning on the television even if now there is another person in his home. Who knows how long it will be for, anyway? He shouldn’t get into the habit of having somebody else here, shouldn’t throw away his old habits, the ones that keep him existing.

Mako looks at the television, confused. Herc turns down the volume a bit for her. She doesn’t mention it.

Mako’s good at letting things be.

Throughout the week, Herc becomes…not really accustomed to Mako’s presence, because after months alone with only a dog for company having another human around is pretty jarring, but his mourning stops coming to the forefront of his mind every time he looks at her. It’s still there, but he can look her in the eye.

He likes having Mako around. Despite her strong ties to his dead, she herself is very alive, and he knows that. It’s a comfort. She becomes more herself than a catalyst for his memories, and Herc’s fond of her. He’s always been fond of her.

Herc figures that Mako will leave after a week, and he lets out a sigh of relief he didn’t know he was going to feel when he realizes that she’s not leaving.

“How long will you stay?” he asks, offhand, at the kitchen table, because he actually has a reason to eat at the kitchen table now.

Mako swallows a bite of the cereal he buys that tastes like cardboard (but lots of things do) and shrugs. “A while,” she says cryptically.

Herc nods. He doesn’t ask, _how long is that?_ because he doesn’t want to be disappointed.

Two weeks pass, then three. Mako doesn’t leave. Herc doesn’t ask when she’s going to leave again. He still keeps the television on at all hours.

When Mako’s been visiting for almost a month, there’s a heavy pounding on the door.

Mako opens it after only a few seconds, and there is Raleigh Becket, with a couple of suitcases of his own.

He drags them into Herc’s house without an invitation, and then looks vaguely guilty when he notices this isn’t actually Mako’s house.

“Hey,” he says awkwardly. He looks about ready to fall over, prominent dark circles under his eyes. His baggy sweater is a rather offensive yellow color. “Is it…okay if I stay here?”

Herc wants Mako to be happy, and it’s not like he’s got anything against Raleigh, even if the guy did punch his son in the face. But, then, Mako punched his son in the face many times, and Herc’s got nothing against her. Besides, when he looks at Raleigh it’s not so… _heavy_ as it was when he looked at Mako, at first, and sometimes even now, when it’s late and he’s tired and he sees her and it just brings back so many memories…

Herc shrugs, sighing heavily and shaking his head, “Go ahead.”

Raleigh grins. “Thanks, sir.”

“Call me Herc.”

“Sure.”

“We got plenty of spare bedrooms,” Herc says, about to turn back to his sudoku puzzle when he sees Mako and Raleigh exchange a rather guilty look. “…Or you could share Mako’s room.”

Both Mako and Raleigh smile gratefully. “Cool,” Raleigh says, and then, as though he feels like he has to explain something, “It’s not—”

Herc holds up a hand. “I don’t want to know, not at twenty three bloody thousand hours.”

Raleigh and Mako seem to understand, and both of them disappear upstairs quickly.

Herc can’t sleep again, but he tries his best, lying awake with Max warm at his feet and the television just barely audible downstairs, and the fact that he knows that there are two people sleeping in the room just across from his comforts him enough, feels enough like home, that it doesn’t take him much time to fall asleep.

Herc wakes up at 0600 hours like Mako, but when they wander downstairs Raleigh is already awake.

“How long did you sleep?” Herc asks, trying to sound offhand and coming off critical.

Raleigh smiles sheepishly. “I got in a few hours.” With a flourish, he presents a plate to Herc. On the plate appear to be some badly misshapen pancakes. Maybe they taste better than they look, but as Raleigh goes off humming to get some more pancakes, some of which also appear to be burnt, Mako whispers, “Be nice,” so Herc doesn’t have high hopes.

They all sit down at the kitchen table, and it’s actually like a real breakfast, and Herc smiles. It almost feels like having a family again.

He does his best not to dwell on the thought, taking a bite of pancakes. They’re not very good, chewy and Herc’s pretty sure the batter wasn’t made correctly in some way, so he pours a generous quantity of syrup over them and keeps going. He ate mess hall food for years, some bad pancakes are nothing compared to the stuff he had to choke down.

They all eat together in silence, none of them much for pointless conversation

Raleigh finishes his pancakes first and patiently waits until Herc and Mako are done to collect the dishes. “Well,” he says, overall pretty chipper, even if he looks tired, “those were awful.”

Mako smiles behind her hand, shaking her head no unpersuasively.

Herc frowns theatrically. “They were delicious!” he says in his least convincing voice, unable to keep from cracking a smile.

Raleigh and Mako both dissolve into giggles, and Herc actually hears himself do something like chuckle, letting out an amused breath through his nose.

After breakfast they all go their separate ways. Raleigh and Mako go off to explore. They invite Herc, but he declines, says he’ll go another day. Raleigh only just got back, he figures he should give Mako some time alone with him.

He goes out jogging with Max and actually makes eye contact with and nods at another jogger, who looks positively shocked. The guy must’ve been overreacting with that look, though, since Herc honestly doesn’t think he could’ve been that unfriendly before.

He goes back home and eats lunch and reads or fills out a Sudoku puzzle while sitting on the couch, TV on as usual, though he had to turn it up today to get it to its normal volume. In a little while, Mako will be back. She’ll be back and they’ll coexist quietly and the uneasy feeling of it being Herc and Max against the world will ease, and it’ll melt away a bit when Tendo calls just like he does every night. Except tonight, Mako will join in the conversation too.

These are his days now.

They’re better than they were before.

Today, though, Raleigh’s here, so Herc braces himself for a maybe welcome break in his routine, even if he’s also bracing himself for Mako to leave now that she’s got the man she really wants to share with with her.

Raleigh and Mako burst through the door, both chuckling in a subdued kind of way. Herc won’t be surprised if he doesn’t hear them really laugh at all. That’s how things are, after laughter was so loud and felt so wrong in the echoing halls of the Hong Kong Shatterdome or drowned out by the machines on the Wall of Life.

It’s hard to get back into the habit.

Raleigh smiles at Herc without his teeth. Mako barely lifts up her lips.

Herc doesn’t smile, he smiled at Max while he was playing with him, trying to give him a ghost of the young man who was once so enthusiastic with his attentions, and now he feels all smiled out.

He hopes the two people who’ve let themselves into his house without asking know he’s happy to see them anyway.

“What’ve you been doing all this time?” Raleigh asks.

“Just reading a bit, I like biographies of people all over the world, don’t ask me why.”

Raleigh looks at the TV and furrows his brow. “You were watching baseball?”

“Is that what it is today?” Herc asks, utterly disinterested.

“Oh,” Raleigh says, and heads into the kitchen in pursuit of Mako, and in that one exclamation it’s like he knows exactly why Herc’s got the television on at all hours.

Herc feels a sudden rush of affection, not just for Raleigh but for Mako, and only a touch of melancholy when he reminds himself that they’ll be gone traveling after a while.

He shakes his head slowly, not really to clear his thoughts but to let them float and be annoying at the back of his head instead of the front, and he goes into the kitchen too, even though it’s an island and he figures it might be a little crowded. It isn’t.

For a second, he ponders whether it might be because the kitchen table is actually more of a dinner table, considering it’s next to the kitchen in a separate room. Does Herc have an unreasonably small dining room? At that point, Herc starts finding that it’s disturbing him just a bit to actually care about this as though this place is any kind of home, and snaps out of it.

Raleigh’s got the refrigerator open and is rummaging through it as though he didn’t just see what was inside it that morning while he was making his dubious pancakes. Actually, said dubious pancakes appear to have made Herc run out of eggs completely. “Damn,” Raleigh mutters. “We’re going to have to go grocery shopping.”

Herc doesn’t let himself feel anything about the pronoun. A slip of the tongue, he assures himself.

“Just make yourself a bloody sandwich,” Herc mutters crankily, pushing past Raleigh to get ingredients. “’S what I bloody do.”

They have sandwiches at the eating table, fuck the name.

Tendo calls after about half an hour, and Raleigh’s not surprised when Herc tells him who it is even before he picks up the phone, so Mako must have told him about Tendo’s nightly calls.

Tonight, Herc talks to Tendo quickly, telling him about the development about having Raleigh visiting, which makes Tendo chuckle and say, “yeah, visiting”, which Herc doesn’t appreciate. He’s just not getting his hopes up. He passes the phone to Mako after that, who shares it with Raleigh so they have a joint call in an odd, confused way. “We’ll get the hang of it!” Raleigh yells optimistically into the phone before he and Mako hang up and smile at each other.

It’s either cute or disgusting; Herc hasn’t decided which one yet.

“You know, you could just call him separately,” Herc suggests.

Mako and Raleigh look at him like they _actually_ hadn’t considered the idea. Herc raises both his eyebrows so enthusiastically it’s almost painful, and, when they still haven’t gotten the hint that things would be much easier if they didn’t use the damn landline in tandem he gives his eyebrows a break and just throws up his hands in exasperation, turning on his heel and heading to the living room, muttering, “Kids!” as loudly as he can with it still being classified as muttering.

It only hits him that he sounded like an exasperated dad a few minutes later, when Mako and Raleigh are still curled up, alternately watching something strange on the TV and talking to each other in low voices that Herc doesn’t bother to interpret.

His breath catches in his chest, because he remembers back when Chuck was fourteen and never seemed to stop being moody and abrasive even for just one second. Herc would complain to Stacker, and then Stacker would shake his head slightly, as though saying, “Oh, Hercules, your skills as a father are so far below mine I don’t know where to start” but he was really saying, “What do you want me to do? I haven’t the faintest fucking idea what to do with my child, how the hell am I supposed to understand your absolute fucking enigma?”, and then both of them would throw their hands into the air, exasperated in a way they could only be when they were with each other, and say, together, out loud, “Kids!”

And they would smile at each other wryly, communicating with the twist of their lips the words, “At least I get it, mate,” and let out a chuckle, and things would be easier, just for a while, because that’s what things were like between them. Easy.

Herc lets out a kind of strangled laugh, thinking of that, and his smile comes and feels absolutely unstrained, even if thinking of Stacker—not to mention Chuck, even if it was just a conversation about him—usually makes his chest squeeze somehow harder, makes it all more painful, and Herc feels wrong for hurting at happy memories.

But he doesn’t really, this time. He aches a bit, knowing he and Stacker will never have that easy friendship again, but he remembers that in that moment—

In that moment, he was happy.

Mako and Raleigh look up at Herc from where they’re sitting on the floor, leaning against the couch, and look surprised.

Herc just shrugs and waves them off and blinks away the light sheen of tears on his eyes because damn if he’s going to cry now.

The vice in his chest has gotten a little less tight, somehow, and Stacker’s chuckle rings in his ears and he doesn’t want to scream. He just remembers that Stacker had a nice laugh, and he misses it, but at least he’s still got Stacker. And hey, at least he’s still got Mako and Raleigh too, here to remind him that he’s in the land of the living.

Herc falls asleep on the couch for the first time, and he’s annoyed when he wakes up, because he can’t follow his usual routine and falling asleep on the couch is the kind of thing Chuck

(he tries his best not to think about it because no matter what happened yesterday there’s that twist in his chest and it’s heavy and unyielding because he can’t forget that he misses his son and there’s his son’s dog and he would gladly give up his son’s dog for his kid but Chuck wouldn’t like him thinking that he liked that damn dog so much and there are the survivors of Operation Pitfall in the next room and it’s not like Herc doesn’t like them and he doesn’t wish they were dead oh god he doesn’t wish they were dead he’s not that kind of man he’s not that kind of bitter man—)

“Hey, Herc!” he hears Raleigh say from the next room.

…would have done. Herc takes a deep breath and straightens out his wrinkled clothes and shakes his head slowly because he’s a man who’s been through awful things before, and he’s going to deal, no matter how much this hurts.

He’s going to deal. “Yeah?” he calls.

“I made breakfast!”

“God save us!” Herc fires back, ambling into the tiny table room, which Mako and Raleigh are already sitting at.

He sits in front of some moderately burnt scrambled eggs. Who burns scrambled eggs?

(Herc burns scrambled eggs, now that he thinks of it.

Chuck could—

Goddamn it.)

Herc stuffs a forkful of eggs into his mouth, focusing on the taste, which is, at least, rather distracting. The food is, despite being burnt, cold and rather clammy, and tastes of both eggs and ashes.

“Delicious,” Herc says with fake cheer when he’s done. “Five stars!” He’s never actually been the type to make jokes, so he doesn’t know why he’s doing it now.

Mako and Raleigh both giggle, and it’s genuine.

That’s probably why.

Three days later, when Herc’s had a bit of time to get used to Raleigh, who’s easy to get used to, Herc walks by the conspicuously open door of Mako and Raleigh’s room and sees them packing their stuff not into the suitcases they’ve been living out of, but into the drawers and closet in their room.

As though they’re not visiting anymore.

Maybe they never were.

They look at him and smile sheepishly, and Raleigh holds up a violently orange sweater. “Is it okay if we stay, uh…”

He looks over at Mako, unsure, and she ends the sentence seamlessly. “Indefinitely?”

Herc doesn’t say anything because there’s a lump in his throat and a kind of relief in his chest that he hasn’t felt for a long time, and he’s afraid that if he answers them, his voice will do something like crack and then his image, whatever it is, he knows it’s not sensitive, will be ruined, so he nods gravely and walks away, smiling to himself when he hears Mako and Raleigh high five behind him.

So the cadence of Herc’s days changes again, this time with the assurance that they will stay changed.

Sometimes, he and Raleigh and Mako go to lunch or dinner together in some quiet part of the city, or go to a bookstore together. Something like that. Something that makes Herc feel a kind of fondness toward the kids that he’s not going to express, because he’s got no time to analyze his emotions, and doesn’t want to, either. Even the nice ones end up hurting when he thinks about them too much.

He supposes that this is it. This is his life now, and he still wakes up crying at night and forgets himself in the past when he ought to be having a conversation, but his house is alive again and his existence feels almost fulfilling sometimes, and that’s better than it used to be.

However, this isn’t it, and Herc honestly shouldn’t be surprised, because his life has never been simple, and, in the end, what happens isn’t a bad thing for once.


	2. Chapter 2

The last knock on the door comes two months after Raleigh’s been living in Herc’s house, and, in truth, there is absolutely no knocking involved.

There’s just the sound of rain, and arguing. “He’s not home, we should go,” Hermann or Gottlieb or Dr. Gottlieb or whatever Herc calls him in his head, it’s all gotten confused after years of witnessing fights about it between the two, says.

This is untrue, of course, seeing as how Herc, Mako, and Raleigh are currently a few feet from the front door. Mako smiles, and Herc remembers that out of all of them, she was closest to the last two K-Scientists standing.

None of them are sure what to do, it seems, since none of them actually stand up to open the door as the argument goes on.

“ _Dude,_ don’t be ridiculous, I can see _lights,_ he’s totally home and it’s not like…well, we’re totally imposing but how the fuck are we supposed to stay in _hotels_?”

Herc frowns at that, sharing a questioning look with Raleigh and Mako.

“Oh, the walls can’t be that thin—”

“They’ll think we’re killing each other or something, it’s been _two days_ —”

“Such drama, Dr. Geiszler—”

“Oh, don’t you Dr. Geiszler me—”

This is when Herc opens the door, raising his eyebrows and saying, “You two do realize we can hear you through the door?”

Gottlieb and Newt stand on the front porch, clearly not having realized that.

“Well, shit,” Newt says. “Uh, hi. We have, um, a favor? To ask of you? And, um, wait, what, we? Who’s we?”

Herc pulls the door wide open and lets the two scientists see Raleigh and Mako, who are standing behind him.

“Oh,” Newt says, briefly at a rare loss for words before he starts talking again. Actually, it’s more like monologuing, but the details are in there somewhere, “Well, okay, hello, Mako, great job saving the world I think I already told you that, but, you know, you too Raleigh, unless you want to be called Mr. Becket or Becket or whatever, in which case I’ll call you Raleigh, anyway, I actually wanted to talk to you, uh? Herc? Can I—cool, okay, we, as in me and um, whatever, him, Hermann, call him Hermann, shut up Hermann, actually thought you were living alone but wanted to ask as a teeny tiny favor if you would let us sleep here for just a couple of nights, on the floor or on the couch, or whatever, because we got these new jobs at MIT and we have to find a place, maybe a house, that’s not too, you know, thin walls, full of other people, and strangers, right? Who likes them? Who likes them complaining about how you argue and yell and throw things during the day or scream when you’re having nightmares? And, as you can probably tell, we _suck_ at being roommates and haven’t really thought this through, but we literally just got here and we don’t even have reservations anywhere, and, again, hotels aren’t exactly great for us, but anyway, where am I going with this? Yeah, just for a couple days would be awesome, it’s been a. It’s been a _hell_ of a few months, y’know?”

Herc does know. He also knows that Newt has a habit of babbling about everything, especially news that is particularly distressing. Like the fact that apparently Newt and Hermann haven’t been in top shape since the end of the war either. Unsurprising, actually. Herc never knew them well, they were always pretty distant with him, but they were so involved in their work, it must’ve been hard to give it up so quickly.

“Nightmares, huh?” Raleigh says sympathetically. “Is that why you didn’t want a hotel?”

Herc jerks his head to let Newt know they can go inside, and Newt briefly pulls at Hermann’s ridiculous jacket to let him know that they’ve been invited in, since Hermann’s avidly studying the ground and thus pointedly _not_ looking at anyone’s face.

Newt giggles, nervous and high-pitched and too loud. “Yeah! Didn’t I say that? Well, it’s not really that bad, we take care of it, you know? We figure it out. We’re okay, yep, we’re cool, we’re—”

Hermann nudges Newt’s shoulder hard enough to make them both wobble, since it looks like they really have been having a miserable time of it, so exhausted they almost look sick.

Newt’s kind of got a desperate, hopeless look in his eyes, and Hermann’s arms are wrapped protectively around his own body, and he hasn’t even looked up to say hello to Mako, even though as far as Herc could tell, they were close.

“It’s just that sometimes there’s a teeny tiny amount of screaming on my part, and we’re afraid that since I haven’t had, like, the screamy kind of nightmare in the past couple of days, I’ll have one tonight or tomorrow, so. Probably not great to stay at hotels. It’s just, I’m really sorry about imposing shit like this on you guys, we’re just really tired and…please? For a bit? I’ll pay you! Hermann’ll pay you! We’ve got money, so. Just say what you want.”

Herc nods at the two, just as Mako smiles gently at Newt. He smiles back, a worn-out thing, but something that looks real nonetheless, and she moves over to look at Hermann, who is leaning heavily on his cane. He’s leaning on Newt, too, though Herc figures that’s for comfort as much as anything else, and still not looking at anyone in a noticeable way, especially considering the way that the hood of that parka appears to cover about half of his face. She holds out her hand in his line of sight, palm up, an invitation.

Hermann takes it.

Newt look lets out a shaky sigh, and Raleigh and Herc exchange a look.

“Well,” Herc says decisively. “You can stay. But,” he says sharply, making a condition, the word making everybody look at him. “I figure that since there’s an extra room, you should go Mako and Raleigh’s way and stay here indefinitely.”

Hermann actually really looks at Herc for the first time, wide brown eyes shocked. “You…jest!” he says, and once Herc would have said _nobody talks like that,_ but then he met Hermann Gottlieb.

At about the same time, Newt says, loudly, which is his default setting, “You’re kidding me!”

“No,” Herc says simply. “We’ve already got three former members of the PPDC living here, why not have five? Welcome.”

“Dude, didn’t you hear? We’re _really, really_ bad roommates. I think…”

“We’re going to have to decline your offer,” Hermann finishes, voice almost emotionless except for a slight tremor. “I’d rather not spend a week in a place like this only to get kicked out when the inhabitants realize we are difficult.”

Clearly, he’s speaking from experience. Both his and Newt’s.

Raleigh scoffs, “We’re not gonna be like that! We come with our own baggage. Our own nightmares. I think you can be happy here.”

Newt laughs like that was a joke, and then flushes in embarrassment, looking at Hermann, who looks at Mako’s hand and then at Mako’s face, briefly, and looks back at Newt, inclining his head slightly.

“Fine,” Newt says, holding out his hand.

Herc takes it. Newt shakes too enthusiastically and then draws away his hand as quickly as possible. Herc knows that this is a man who lives fast. It’s a change of pace.

“You’ll be able to find your room right away. It’s upstairs.”

Hermann and Newt both nod. “I think, yeah,” Newt says, “We’ll uh, head up there. Thanks, man.”

One side of Herc’s mouth tugs upwards. “No problem.”

It doesn’t take long for Hermann and Newt to get up the stairs and shut themselves in their bedroom and, presumably, fall asleep. Of course, they could be doing any number of things, but sleep is always a good placeholder.

Mako looks happy, and Raleigh looks happy because Mako is happy. Herc feels that peacefulness again, because this is how it was supposed to be, no matter how fucked up they all are, this house was never meant to have empty bedrooms.

Herc sleeps lightly all night, half expecting a screaming nightmare—Chuck only had about five that Herc witnessed, but they were all absolute hell—but one never comes.

He hears muttering, though, from one of the rooms, not the television, and figures that someone is having a nightmare, maybe more than one someone. God knows everyone’s sleep is disturbed in this place, and not everyone screams during bad dreams. Herc barely makes a sound.

Herc decides that tomorrow night he’s going to turn the television off, just in case there’s something he ought to hear.

Max burrows deeper into the covers on the foot of the bed, and Herc falls asleep in bits and pieces, and wakes up at 0600 hours with sweat soaking his covers and tears drying on his face.

He lies in bed for a moment and just breathes, and reminds himself that at least he sleeps longer, now, and that’s something.

Sometimes he forgets that all the little somethings that have changed turn into something bigger when they’re all crushed together, turn into his contentment, at least relative to how he was before all of this.

Herc may be quiet, and he may keep to himself, but that doesn’t mean he’s much good at being alone.

At least he’s not alone anymore. Well, he amends, sitting up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and burying his hand into Max’s fur and scratching, almost alone.

Herc changes, brushes his teeth, heads down to breakfast.

Raleigh and Mako are sitting at the table. This time, Hermann is there too, dressed in what’s probably too many layers for the inside of the house, but at least it’s fall outside. Newt’s not sitting at the table, instead he’s sitting on the counter, legs swinging back and forth, chatting away. “—I’m pretty sure Hermann and I can do some cooking, 99% sure we both have some Chemistry background, _at the very least_ we had Chemistry classes and they were probably really advanced because obviously, so I’m pretty sure we can cook, it’s all just science, I just probably do it better because _obviously_ —”

Hermann lets out a huffy sigh. “Excuse me, I’m fairly sure that I could do a much better job than you, largely because I would not set the kitchen on fire.”

“I wouldn’t set anything on fire!”

“You would absolutely set something on fire, may I remind you of my _papers_?”

“That was one time! They weren’t even important!”

“And if they had been important?”

“I don’t know, that didn’t happen! Ugh, you’re always working in theoreticals, you just can’t let things be.”

“Oh, _I’m_ the one who can’t let things be?”

“I’m sorry, what’s that supposed to mean?”

“Come on, you two, it’s breakfast time, eat breakfast instead of arguing, I’m sure Raleigh’s made something…” Herc trails off.

“Atrocious?” Raleigh interjects helpfully.

“Yes, that. And, Newt, get off the counter. That’s not for sitting.”

Newt scoffs, and starts to say something along the lines of “You can’t tell me what to do!” when Hermann snaps, “For Heaven’s sake, Newton, it’s the man’s house, sit in a _chair_.”

Despite all the arguing the two engage in, Newt actually listens and goes over to the chair next to Hermann’s and eats his alleged French toast enthusiastically while Hermann cuts his into tiny pieces and proceeds to pick at it.

“C’mon, Herms,” Newt says cheerfully, mouth full of French toast that has an interesting added ingredient of crushed egg shells. “It’s delicious!” He’s lying, obviously, but it’s not a joke. Apparently Hermann’s not much for breakfast and Newt worries.

Those two always took the cake for the most dysfunctional couple in any Shatterdome they happened to be in.

Hermann tries a small, neat little square of French toast, and is clearly not thrilled. “It’s disgusting. I feel actual, gustatory disgust. No offense meant to the chef.” Hermann happens to be one of the very few in the world who can utter that statement and make it sound like an actual statement as opposed to a snide insult.

“None taken,” Raleigh responds.

Newt swallows. “Yeah. We’ll go shopping for our groceries tomorrow or whatever; we’ll get some cardboard cereal with like five calories for you if it makes you happy.”

Newt and Hermann exchange a wry, mocking look at the last word.

Herc understands. Sometimes he feels like the idea of being happy is a joke, too.

Newt gamely finishes the last of the toast and then lets Raleigh take the plate to the kitchen to wash it, letting out a loud sigh and scrubbing his hands against his face and through his hair, as if trying to wake himself up. “Oh, shit,” he groans. “Do I have work? Ugh, do I have work _right now_? Because if I do, I might actually kill myself.”

“Don’t say that,” Hermann snaps, sounding genuinely angry.

“Fuck, sorry, sorry, sorry, I don’t mean that. When are we supposed to be at MIT?”

“Nine o’ clock, which you should probably start remembering,” Hermann says coldly.

Newt grimaces. “Sorry, buddy, I just don’t know when to close my big mouth. Let’s just go upstairs and get ready for our first lectures.”

“Fine,” Hermann replies, and he must somehow sound more relaxed, because Newt grins brightly and says,

“Away we go!”

Hermann gets up and follows him out of the table room and up the stairs. They’re loud, the two of them, what with the heavy thump of Hermann’s cane and the various sounds Newt’s jumping around makes against the floor.

Herc frowns after them, and Raleigh and Mako emerge from the kitchen, both clearly having heard the conversation.

“They’ve really been having a tough time,” Raleigh says.

“I didn’t expect anything less,” Herc says, and then snorts. “And they really thought I’d turn them away? I’ve known ‘em at least seven years, I’m not that cold.”

Mako nods. “They’re PPDC.”

“So they’re already part of the family, no matter what,” Raleigh says like he believes it, and, Christ, did Herc give this kid an invitation to be a complete sap?

But, once Herc thinks about it, he nods reluctantly, because he knows that’s how he’s been trying to think of all of this, knows that’s how he’s already thinking of the two upstairs, even if he’s never known them as anything more than colleagues, but the hopeless part of him that’s always saying _your family is dead_ is always pushing it back. So he won’t get hurt.

But Herc’s been getting hurt his whole life, and at least with something like this, the hurt comes with happiness.

So he’s tentatively making a family out of a group of people he’s fought with and watched friends die with, and he’s alright with that.

They don’t replace the family Herc’s already lost.

But they don’t have to. They just have to be here.

Herc’s already preparing himself to lose every one of them, because that’s how he lives, but he’s also reminding himself to live in the moment just a bit, and remember he’s got them _now_.

And the truth is he’s not going to lose anyone else, not while he can help it.

At night, Herc gets back from his last walk with Max just as Tendo calls at eight on the dot, and he and Herc chat pleasantly, easily, especially considering that Herc was never much for chatting.

But Tendo was always good enough at it for two. They don’t reminisce, but they do talk about Alison and the baby, and, in a way, Herc finds himself talking about how things were back when _he_ had a baby, when Angela and Chuck were alive and Herc couldn’t even dream of them dying, finds himself asking if the kid acts like this or that and nodding and saying, “Yeah, it was like that for us too,” or sighing and saying, “You’re luckier than we were.”

After about a half hour, as usual, Herc passes the phone to Raleigh and Mako, who continue to try their best to have a coherent conversation while sharing the same phone. They insist that they’ll get the hang of it.

After another half hour, Mako and Raleigh hang up the phone and head to the living room. Herc’s been in the kitchen, but now he sets himself up in the living room too, with a book.

He turns on the television, but keeps it on low, at a murmur, because Mako is reading and Raleigh is knitting next to her, swearing under his breath every time he drops a stitch, and Herc doesn’t want to disturb them.

That’s when Newt and Hermann, who must’ve gotten back from MIT at some point, stomp down the stairs and stop at the living room, wondering if they’re welcome there, giving each other a look, and deciding that they’re not welcome there until Herc says, “If you want to come in, it’s no problem. There’s still some space here.”

Newt and Hermann actually duck through the door at that, and Newt makes his place on the floor next to Mako because she smiles invitingly, while Hermann looks around for somewhere that won’t aggravate his leg. Herc pats the pretty big empty space next to his place on the couch, and Hermann sits there, leg stretched out next to Newt after Mako scoots a bit to the side to sit right in front of Herc.

Maybe it’s time for some more furniture, Herc thinks, surveying the amount of people on the floor and the amount of space in the damn living room.

Newt appears to be playing some kind of handheld videogame, which surprises Herc exactly not at all, since he’s pretty certain he’s seen it before, and Hermann is squinting at the screen, occasionally hissing whispered suggestions and criticisms of moves or whatever people do on videogames, Herc never had much time for them, which does surprise Herc a bit. He doesn’t think he’s seen that before, which makes sense, considering the fact that Hermann was as professional as possible, even with the issue of having Newt around to break his veneer of professionalism but good.

Newt snaps back, “That was perfectly legitimate, geez, Herms, you’re such a backseat driver,”

Followed by, naturally, “Don’t call me Herms! And that was a terrible move, you could have quite easily done the one I suggested!”

“It made no sense!”

“It made perfect sense!”

“Well, at least it didn’t then, you suck at explaining those things, they’re just too complex for your stunted conversational abilities.”

“Excuse me, this has nothing to do with my conversational abilities, it has to do with my abilities to explain, and, may I remind you, I was a Professor for—”

“ _Over a decade_ , whatever, so was I, and I have more doctorates than you!”

“Nobody gets six doctorates, and your avatar should probably jump before it dies!”

“Shiiit…”

This is all said in a barely audible murmur that is almost comforting as opposed to annoying, as it should be.

When Hermann mutters, louder so that he can make it clear that he’s talking to the room in general, “Why is the television on if nobody seems to be watching it?” Herc turns it off, and the room feels far more alive than it did when it was just him, Max, and the canned voices on TV.

Herc doesn’t fall asleep on the couch this time, but he comes close. At this point, Raleigh and Mako have already gone upstairs to bed. Hermann and Newt have set the game aside but are talking about something to do with their lectures that Herc can’t make heads or tails of, so he doesn’t try.

“You two should go to sleep,” Herc suggests as he ambles out of the room.

He doesn’t expect his suggestion to be taken seriously, and it clearly isn’t, since he briefly wakes up to Newt and Hermann going up the stairs a couple of hours later. Surprisingly, he manages to fall asleep again.

His sleep is disturbed for the rest of the night, definitely, when, a few hours later, somebody lets out a _scream_ , a legitimate, terrified scream.

Herc shoots out of his bed and is down the hall in seconds, followed by Mako and Raleigh. He remembers that they were warned about this, though, and manages to relax just a bit, which is hard when there’s screaming and crying and less than coherent mumbling coming from the room.

The screaming abates after a couple of minutes, even if the crying and babbling keeps on, and Herc figures that Hermann probably wouldn’t appreciate anyone pushing. Even so, Herc briefly cracks open the door and asks, “Is there anything we can do?”

“Leave us alone,” Hermann says, sounding exhausted, voice somewhat muffled, and Herc closes the door.

“Just in case,” he tells Mako and Raleigh, shrugging, and they nod and even though it must be hard for them not to be heroes, they all go off to their rooms, and the sounds coming from Hermann and Newt’s don’t do wonders for any of their sleep cycles, but Herc doesn’t mind, and he’d bet anything that Mako and Raleigh don’t mind either, which makes the guilt radiating off of Newt while he babbles in the morning kind of pointless.

He’s not even talking about the nightmare, just that “Summer’s going to be over soon, maybe, well, in a couple of months, oh, right, sorry about that last night, I’d say I won’t do it again, but, let’s face it, I’m totally gonna do it again, moving on…”

Mako cuts him off. “We don’t mind. You don’t have to be ashamed of it. We aren’t going to say that it doesn’t make us lose sleep, but that doesn’t matter. None of us sleep soundly, another reason for it isn’t important.”

“Wow,” Newt says, nodding. “Who taught you how to comfort people, Hermann?”

At that, Raleigh chuckles into his glass of orange juice, Herc smirks, and Mako and Hermann look affronted for all of five seconds before Mako lets slip a smile and shrugs, and Hermann rolls his eyes.

“Those two did spend a lot of time together while Mako was growing up,” Herc informs Raleigh, obnoxiously acting as though everybody else in the room isn’t there, something he used to do every once in a while because it made Scott furious.

Raleigh nods sagely, playing along and looking only at Herc. “So Newt _could_ be right.” Raleigh cocks his head. “Wherever he is.”

Mako shoves Raleigh’s shoulder and he laughs.

Herc smiles at the sound, because it’s about time laughter got introduced back into his life. Somehow, with everyone here, it feels easier to breathe. “We should get new furniture,” Herc says.

Mako nods thoughtfully. “Good idea. We only have the sofa in the living room, but it would fit other things. Some reclining chairs, maybe?”

“Oooh, that sounds awesome, right Herms?”

“Never call me that.”

“Anyway,” Raleigh says before the scientists can start bickering again. “We could find a furniture store. First I think we should probably go shopping for groceries and stuff, though.”

“Right, didn’t we say we were going to buy groceries today, Hermann?” Newt muses.

“Yes. I assumed we would put it off for at least another four days, as usual.”

“Yeah, we’ve got better things to do.”

“Than buy food?” Herc asks skeptically.

“Science,” Newt says gravely.

Herc rolls his eyes. “I’m pretty sure science can wait for you to feed yourselves.”

“You’d be surprised,” Hermann says in a voice so serious that Herc can’t tell if he’s joking or not. “Of course,” he then says thoughtfully. “We hadn’t factored in that we are now living in a house with others, who presumably feed themselves in a more regular—”

“—let’s call it boring—”

“…fair enough, manner. Perhaps we _should_ go shopping for food today.”

“Don’t we have work? Wait, never mind, there are totally supermarkets here that’re open 24/7. Let’s go grocery shopping tonight, guys, it’ll be fun!”

“Pretty sure it’ll be the exact opposite of fun,” Herc grumbles. “But we don’t have enough food for everyone, so I second that. And I own this house, so my word is law.”

Herc gets a lot of mildly affronted looks for that, but he just smirks, and the others let it go.

That night, after Tendo calls, they head to the twenty four hour supermarket that Herc’s passed by many times while getting enough food to comfortably survive on at a much smaller grocery store that’s already closed for the night.

Herc hasn’t gone grocery shopping in a substantial, food for a week, groceries for the family kind of way since…

Well.

Herc’s starting to question how exactly they’re going to go about this, and just how good of an idea it was to bring everyone along.

Herc’s getting the notion that this is going to be a bit of a clusterfuck.

“Alright,” he says, “Let’s split up and get our food.”

Everyone does so, and Herc, naturally, ends up alone, wandering around and starting to wonder if splitting up was the best way to go.

He’s pondering whether to buy white or whole wheat bread and feeling horribly out of place under the harsh supermarket lights when Mako and Raleigh run into him.

Their shopping trolley contains orange juice, eggs, some fruits rolling around pathetically, and nothing else.

Herc’s trolley has nothing in it. He’s fairly certain he’s been standing in front of the bread for ten minutes. He throws both the white and whole wheat bread into the cart and sighs. “You realize you should put those in bags, right?” he says, pointing at the apples, pears, and bananas rolling sadly at the bottom of the trolley.

Mako and Raleigh shoot each other a guilty look. “There are bags?” Mako asks. No wonder they’ve been stealing his food this whole time.

“They’re right next to the produce. And you don’t just grab the first damn fruit you see, you have to make sure it’s good.”

Raleigh and Mako stare at Herc blankly. Herc stares back at these kids that have either been on rations or had other people grocery shop for them their whole lives, and sighs. He grabs an apple and inspects it. “See?” he says, showing them the bruises all over it. “This is gonna be mushy. ‘Course, it could always be ‘cause you had ‘em bounding around your cart. Get bananas that are yellow, not green or brown, get apples that are at least a bit like the same color all over, and squeeze them to make sure they’re firm.”

Raleigh and Mako nod purposefully and head back towards the produce section. Herc’s been eating in mess halls for a good part of his life, but at least, he reassures himself, he knows how to buy a goddamn banana.

He should have had different people get different necessities, because he’s floundering here, not knowing what the others are buying. He should have given clearer orders.

Herc tries not to think about how depressing it is that buying food daunts him when he’s faced down monsters. He wanders toward the meat. It’s not like he knows how to cook it, but it can’t be too hard, he saw Angela do it plenty of times. Herc grabs a few packaged slabs of meat that are vaguely steak shaped and tosses them into the trolley, following them with what are probably some sausage links, and tiny chicken breasts. After that, he goes back to basics and manages to find some lunch meats and protein shakes.

While walking, somewhat dazed and a bit grumpily, down an aisle devoted completely to ridiculous cereals, he runs into Newt and Hermann, who are, predictably, bickering, and, also predictably, so wrapped up in each other that they don’t even notice Herc’s presence.

“ _Really,_ Newton, it’s ridiculous. That’s not breakfast food, it’s candy.”

“Oh, you’re one to talk, Mr. Did-I-Eat-Breakfast-Whoops-Forgot-Oh-Well.”

“I must say that I’m certain that not eating breakfast at all is likely preferable, health wise, to eating _Choco Doodles._ ”

“That is not even a little true.”

“Gentlemen,” Herc says loudly, and Newt and Hermann actually shut up and notice him.

“Oh,” Newt says. “Hi.”

Herc looks into their trolley, which appears to have rather large quantities of Jell-O, tea, and coffee, and absolutely nothing else.

They’re worse than Mako and Raleigh.

“For Christ’s sake,” Herc mutters, grabbing the things from their trolley and dumping them into his own.

“What on Earth are you doing?” Hermann asks, sounding affronted.

“We’re going to find Mako and Raleigh and do this together. Clearly having everyone do their own shopping isn’t working. Don’t tell me you two subsist on coffee, tea, and Jell-O.”

“No!” Newt responds defensively. “Cereal too. Also take-out. And frozen foods.”

“And multivitamins,” Hermann adds.

“Oh, of course,” Herc mutters, spotting Mako and Raleigh and waving them over. “Multivitamins. How did you survive on your own?”

Hermann and Newt shoot each other an uncomfortable look that Herc decides to ignore.

“We’re doing this together,” Herc informs Mako and Raleigh as he moves their stuff into his trolley. “Splitting up was a mistake.”

Raleigh nods ruefully. “Yeah.” He frowns. “How much Jell-O do we need?”

Mako smirks and Herc rolls his eyes. “Ask those two geniuses,” he says, jerking his head toward Newt and Hermann.

Hermann scowls and Newt shrugs before lighting up suddenly. “Oooh, we should get ice cream!”

Hermann rolls his eyes so dramatically it looks painful, and Mako giggles.

Herc looks into the trolley again, hoping it’ll seem less depressing this time around. Nope. So far, after about an hour, their combined efforts have yielded: orange juice, a couple of plastic bags of fruit, two loaves of bread, some suspicious meat, an unnecessary amount of Jell-O, and far more coffee and tea than could possibly be healthy. Herc shakes his head. “No, before ice cream we have to get actual food.” Herc sets off towards the lunch meats.

He dumps some ham, salami, pepperoni, anything that catches anyone’s attention into the trolley. Raleigh brings over milk and a few different cheeses, and Hermann and Newt weren’t kidding about the multivitamins. Mako points out that if they’re trying to shop reasonably, they should probably get some vegetables, so in a few tomatoes, some frozen vegetables, some bags of lettuce, and several bags of baby carrots go.

Some more juice, some soda, pancake and waffle mix, too many bags of chips, and boxes of cereal are added, and once the cart is near overflowing, Herc nods in satisfaction.

“This looks about right,” he announces, trying his best not to feel too much pride at finally having the _fucking_ grocery shopping done.

Once they pool some money together and buy the food, all that’s left to do is lug it home, which, after having been in an excessively air conditioned supermarket for upwards of two hours, learning exactly how badly suited to civilian life they all are, is more daunting than it seems.

They manage it, though, but once they collapse at the table, feeling far too drained considering what they just did, Herc announces, “We’re getting a bloody car.”

Newt cheers weakly.

“Who here can drive?” Herc asks. “Jaegers don’t count.”

“No kidding,” Newt mutters.

“I can,” Raleigh offers.

“And so can I,” Herc says. It’s an easy count to make. “Only two of us, huh?”

Raleigh shrugs. “I don’t mind driving people around.” He frowns. “How have you been getting to work anyway?” he asks Newt and Hermann.

Newt sighs and Hermann scowls.

“We tried public transportation, but, wow, uh, long story short, that didn’t work out, so we’ve been carpooling with one of my colleagues for the past couple of days, but I’m…pretty sure that’s not going to be a viable option pretty soon.”

Raleigh shrugs. “I can drive you guys.”

Newt’s enthusiastic “Thanks, dude!” overlaps with Hermann’s, “We know nothing about your abilities as a motorist.”

“Don’t be so paranoid, dude, I’m sure he’s fine.”

“Seriously,” Raleigh says. “Yancy taught me how to drive when I was fourteen. I’ve never even gotten a ticket.”

Hermann looks at Raleigh suspiciously. “Fine,” he says. And then, as an afterthought, “Thank you.”

“I’ll learn to drive as well,” Mako pipes up from the kitchen, where she’s unpacking the toaster that Herc bought months ago and never got around to using.

Newt nods, knee bouncing up and down. It’s like his whole body’s vibrating with energy, but Herc’s getting the feeling that the kid’s actually dead tired, no matter how he’s moving. “Um, now that I think about it, I need somebody to drive me to the psychologist on Sundays. And the psychiatrist. Once a month.” Newt giggles nervously. “Don’t ask.”

Herc already knows well enough that Newton Geiszler isn’t exactly the poster boy for mental stability, and he lifts up his hands in a placating _nobody’s asking_ gesture. “I’ll do it, I’ve got plenty of time.”

“Incidentally,” Hermann pipes up reluctantly, “I will need somebody to drive me to doctor’s appointments.”

“I can do that too,” Herc says, nodding.

They fall silent for a while, the only sounds the tapping of Newt’s feet on the floor and the drumming of his fingers on the table.

Hermann is, for his part, tapping his fingers against the table silently.

Raleigh’s rested his chin on his folded arms, and Herc can tell he’s getting ready to say something. Finally: “I’m thinking of going back to school,” Raleigh says with more embarrassment than is warranted for a perfectly admirable statement. “I mean, community college.”

Hermann looks up with interest and smiles briefly, warmly. “That’s an excellent idea.”

Raleigh grins. “Yeah?”

“Absolutely.”

“I’m also thinking about it,” Mako admits from where she’s taken up a place next to Raleigh.

Raleigh looks at her like she hung the moon.

Herc feels a smile tug at his lips. “Hermann’s right, it’s a great idea. It’ll give you both something to do.” He doesn’t mention that he’s the only one with no way to fill his days, now. He’s not sure if he wants to, sometimes. The world feels huge and exhausting, but he files away the thought that he should probably get around to spending his days doing _something_ worthwhile in the back of his mind.

They lapse back into silence, but it doesn’t feel oppressive. The sound of the others breathing helps Herc breathe easier himself.

“What time is it?” Mako finally asks, once Newt’s put his head down on the table and may or may not have actually fallen asleep.

“Morning,” Raleigh announces. “We should probably go to bed.”

None of them really enjoy that thought.

Hermann nudges Newt’s shoulder. “Get up, we’re going to our room.”

“Ugh, just leave me here,” Newt mumbles into his arms.

“You’re not sleeping at my table,” Herc informs him, and Newt gives him a weak evil eye as he gets to his feet and hold out his arm for Hermann to lever himself up with.

Newt and Hermann leave, and Raleigh and Mako follow them up the stairs.

Herc walks over to the living room and is faced with Max staring at him balefully.

Herc runs a hand through his hair and figures he really ought to try and get some sleep. He’s exhausted.

He and Max amble up to his room, and Herc changes into sleep clothes.

His bed will never stop being too big for one person.

He reminds himself that he’s not alone, that there are other people in this house and they’re alive and breathing, and that brings him some comfort as he closes his eyes and prays for peaceful sleep.

He knows he won’t get it.

Herc doesn’t do peace anymore.

He wakes up to screaming just as the sun starts to rise outside.

He changes into his tracksuit as the screaming dies down. Newt must have woken up.

Herc rouses Max and they head downstairs.

Mako and Raleigh are both sitting at the table, picking at cereal. Herc makes himself one of the disgusting protein shakes he bought and drains it without tasting it.

“Going jogging,” he grunts at the kids as he clips a leash to Max’s collar, and they nod to show they heard him.

It’s not too cold outside, even though it's still winter.

It strikes Herc suddenly, the thought that at some point in the last two weeks, when everyone was too distracted by Newt and Hermann’s arrival to really notice, 2026 came along.

 _January,_ Herc thinks. _January, January, January_ circles around his head and once he thinks _January 25 th, _he has to stop and take deep breaths and pretend he’s just out of shape as Max whines at him pitifully.

He remembers, vaguely, being a child, when a year had seemed to stretch endlessly.

He wonders if Chuck had thought that way, when he was little, thought he would live…

Thought he would live forever.

Herc runs back to the house and vomits onto the lawn.

He shudders as he walks inside, skin clammy with sweat, and ignores Raleigh’s greeting as he passes through the living room.

He walks upstairs, grabs some clothes, peels off his sweat soaked tracksuit, goes into the bathroom, turns on the shower, steps under the heavy spray, and sobs.

He cries until the water turns cold and then turns it off and takes deep breaths as he towels himself off.

He’s fine.

(He’s spent too many mornings crying in the shower to really believe that.)

Herc changes into his civvies, combs his hair, brushes his teeth, and looks at himself in the mirror, squaring his shoulders and standing tall.

He’s strong.

He’s a fixed point.

It’s a new year, and he will survive it.

His face in the mirror looks so _old._ He's gone completely gray.

Herc stares himself down. _Be strong,_ he tells himself. _For them._

He nods at his reflection and steps out into his room, where Max is lounging on the unmade bed. Max looks at him hopefully, tongue lolling out of his mouth.

Herc walks over to the dog and grins (just a baring of teeth, really, no happiness necessary) and pets Max, who pants happily. “Let’s go face the day, boy,” Herc mutters as he pulls away from the dog and heads downstairs.

In the living room, Newt’s got papers and books spread out in front of him on the floor, and appears to be muttering something or other about Kaiju anatomy as he scribbles notes into one of the books. Mako and Raleigh are huddled together on the couch, looking at something on Raleigh’s laptop.

When Herc sits next to them, he sees that they’re looking at community colleges. He’s glad, and briefly, fiercely, proud, because every kid deserves to have a future, no matter how impressive their past.

Herc cracks open a paperback that he picked up at the supermarket, and sinks into the plot hole ridden and action packed bestseller.

He missed having time to read like this, over the past years.

He should go back to basics, back to the classics, something safe and old and comfortable.

Herc’s going to remember to go to a bookstore next time he’s in town, build up his barely existent book collection.

When will he next be in town, though? The Central Business District is barely thirty minutes away walking, and it’ll likely be about ten once they get a car.

But Herc’s not quite ready to face the city yet.

Not this month.

 _February,_ he thinks. _February, I’ll go out._

“Raleigh?” Herc says.

“Yeah?”

“Think you can head into the city and get that car we were talking about?”

“Today?” Raleigh asks, surprised.

Herc shrugs. “We need it, don’t we? What do you say?”

Raleigh grins. “Sure!” He turns to Mako, but before he opens his mouth she says, “Yes, I’ll come with you.”

“You’re the best!” Raleigh informs her as he thunders up the stairs for whichever reason.

Mako smiles gently. “He likes cars,” she explains unnecessarily to Herc with a shrug of her shoulders.

Newt snorts from his place on the floor.

Mako and Raleigh leave, and the living room is almost quiet. But nowhere’s ever quiet when Newt Geiszler’s around.

Newt’s still sprawled out on the floor, working and muttering to himself and occasionally twisting a few strands of hair around his index finger and tearing them out of his head.

Herc frowns when he sees that, but doesn’t mention it. Eventually, he does speak, though, once Newt’s whispering has gotten a bit too frenetic for comfort. It seems like he’s frustrated with something, hell if Herc knows _what_ , he never liked science. “Where’s your other half?” Herc asks off-hand, and Newt goes still.

Herc starts to think that maybe that wasn’t the best question to ask, but it’s a legitimate one—Newt and Hermann are almost always together, and when they’re not it catches Herc’s eye. Herc’s concern grows as Newt pauses before thinking of an answer to the question.

“Um, he’s still in our room. He’s just really tired,” Newt mumbles, sounding disheartened.

“He sick?” Herc asks.

“…No…not, like, not physically sick.”

“So the other kind, huh?”

“Look, it’s none of your business!” Newt snaps defensively, and Herc almost snaps back but stays calm. Newt tends to have sudden bursts of anger that pass as quickly as they come.

Herc nods. “All right.” He worries, though, about what’s going on. It’s clear that the past year hasn’t been pretty for the scientists, but it’s not like Herc really knows what happened in their lives in the months before they showed up on his doorstep.

Herc doesn’t want to lose anyone else to the war, especially not now that the war’s over.

Newt suddenly stands up and starts pacing around, eventually walking into the kitchen. Herc can hear him banging around in there, doesn’t know what he’s doing and doesn’t want to ask.

He goes back to his book.

At eight Tendo calls as usual, opening with, “What’s up in Herc Hansen’s home for displaced former Shatterdome employees?”

Herc chuckles a bit, “That’s a mouthful.”

“Yeah, needs some work. Serious question, though. How’ve you been?”

“I’ve been fine,” Herc lies without missing a beat. He’s good at pretending to be fine. “Thinking I should be doing something with my life after retirement other than staying at home all day. I’ll figure it out. I’m thinking of re-reading the classics.”

“Hey, good idea. Literature’s fun once you get into it. Thought of trying some volunteer work?”

“A bit,” Herc says, even though he hasn’t. It’s a good idea, though, and he files it away.

“Herc,” Tendo says after a short pause. “Look, I was thinking that since you don’t seem keen on a therapist, you could at least look up a support group for bereaved parents.”

Herc’s stomach swirls with nausea at those words. _Bereaved parents._

Is that what he is now? A bereaved parent?

Well, he guesses so.

He thinks he’s feeling fine, thinks that the grief that’s followed losing his son isn’t wrapped around him so tight, and then it comes back like a chokehold with a word.

He doesn’t want to talk about it. He doesn’t know if he could.

“No,” he says, short and to the point and daring Tendo to disagree.

“Okay, no pressure, just think about it.”

Herc snorts. “How’s the baby?”

Tendo regales him with several stories about the child, and Herc listens to every single one with an aching in his chest.

Before Tendo hangs up, he says, “January 25th’s coming up, like you don’t know that. People’ll want to do something to commemorate K-V Day. You’ll probably be expected to speak. All of us are probably expected to speak.”

“Fuck expectations,” Herc spits out. “Let me have that day in peace.”

“That’s around what Newt and Hermann said too, yeah, and I’m figuring that Raleigh and Mako are going to do the same when I catch them. I don’t blame you. I’m not going to any memorials either. It’s too raw.”

Herc sighs, a worn out whoosh of air exploding from his chest. “Yeah,” he says, “Too raw.”

Mako and Raleigh do end up saying that they’re planning to stay in for the first anniversary of K-V Day, but Raleigh and Mako put out a press release about it anyway, asking for the public to realize that this date means a lot to them and they want to commemorate it and memorialize the dead at their own pace, and that the public continue to allow them some privacy.

Leading up to K-V Day, Mako is quieter than usual, Raleigh tries his best to be cheerful but has a haunted look in his eyes and barely sleeps, Newt sometimes almost doesn’t speak at all, and sometimes he speaks too much and about too many different topics at the same time, but his heart isn’t in it, he’s scattered and subdued, and Hermann, for his part, only leaves his room to go to work.

It’s not like Herc hasn’t seen this kind of behavior before, even before the war’s end, but he knows it’s the impending anniversary that’s bringing on all this misery.

And Herc finds himself unable to stop replaying that day in his head over and over again.

His last conversation with Chuck, his son’s final words, the final words of his best friend, everything that ended that last day, everything Herc had been working toward for over twelve years happening and leaving him alone and empty.

Herc and Chuck weren’t ever the touchy-feely type, but Herc finds himself spending night after night thinking that he should have hugged his son goodbye.

Herc finds himself crying in the shower every morning like clockwork in a way he hasn’t since the first few months after Chuck died.

He doesn’t know why all of a sudden everything’s gotten royally fucked up just because of a day.

It’s just a number on a calendar.

Herc does his best to keep everything together, to at least put together some sorry looking sandwiches to shove at Raleigh, Newt (and by extension the absent Hermann), and Mako, who seem too wrapped up in their heads to really pay attention to much of anything, and to only fall apart in the mornings when the sound of the shower can drown the sound of his sobs.

He’s not half bad at being a fixed point, but January is still hell, and when the 25th rolls around, Herc uses up all the warm water.

None of the others mention it.

They don’t turn on the television, because there’ll probably be specials about the War on every channel. Newt and Hermann don’t go to work. They don’t have to. The 25th has become a holiday.

Herc spends most of the day after his shower in the living room, staring down at an open book and not even trying not to think about the people he’s lost.

Max whines and slobbers all over Herc’s lap, and it’s probably fucked up in every way that the sight of that dog hits Herc hard in a way it hasn’t for months.

 _You think you’re getting over it,_ Herc remembers telling Stacker, a few months after Tamsin died. _And then something reminds you of what a one of a kind woman she was and how you’re never going to see her again and you’re back to smelling the dregs of her perfume and looking at old photographs, wondering where the fuck all that time went._

Once Herc gave his son a dog and made him smile like he was really, honestly overjoyed, and now that dog is grown and Chuck is dead and Herc never really saw that smile again; if he did, it wasn’t directed at him.

Herc falls asleep on the couch, too early, and when he wakes up the next day he’s covered with a scratchy blanket and Max is sleeping on his stomach and not letting him breathe, and he doesn’t feel better, not really, but the 25th has passed and he feels like maybe he can move on just a little easier after this.

There are just a few days left in January, and things are going to be easier after this, Herc promises himself. Things are going to be easier.

And when February finally comes around, they are. Herc can breathe a bit easier, at the very least. It’s not like he thinks things are going to be perfect now, but he’s banking on better.

 _January’s over,_ he reminds himself too many times, and he feels dizzy with relief even though his son’s voice doesn’t stop haunting his dreams.

At least the days aren’t so heavy now.

It’s magical thinking, probably, that just because the 25th’s come and gone things are improving any, but Mako and Raleigh are laughing more readily, nudging each other and giggling at ridiculous inside jokes from their time traveling together that Herc will never hope to understand.

Hermann still isn’t too keen on actually leaving his room, but now that the post K-V Day celebrations are over, he’s got to head out to go to work and has the tendency to actually come downstairs and work on awful thousand piece jigsaw puzzles at the table.

Herc’s honestly worried about Newt, though, and with good reason—he just seems to get more and more scattered over the next couple of weeks, wandering around the house with books in his hands, scribbling notes in the margins and lecturing to himself.

Herc finds a few notes about Kaiju brains scrawled onto the counter in black permanent marker and has to take a few very deep breaths.

He dreads ever going into the scientist’s room, because he’s still not sure whether they’ve written all over the walls or not. It seems unfair to suspect something like that, but Herc knows that genius and common sense are apparently mutually exclusive, at least in this house.

(One day, when Hermann and Newt are at work, Herc’s curiosity does get the best of him and he briefly pokes his head into Newt and Hermann’s room and sure enough, there’s an awful lot of equations and diagrams that sure as hell shouldn’t be there written on the walls, along with a cartoonish but surprisingly well-drawn green marker Godzilla terrorizing a wall city that Herc is about nine thousand percent sure isn’t any kind of legitimate scientific work. That night he starts looking up whiteboards and blackboards that’ll fit into the house and distract Newt and Hermann from Herc’s _damn walls._ )

Newt mentioned his therapist and psychiatrist, but lately whenever Herc asks Newt waves him away, insisting he’s “busy” because apparently taking a couple hours out of his day for his mental health just isn’t worth it.

Newt’s thirty-six years old, though, so Herc lets him be and doesn’t say anything past inquiring after the therapist, until halfway through February (and where has the time gone, really, he had plans for this month but it’s gone by just like all the others) he heads downstairs in the middle of the night, leaving Max snoozing on the bed, because at this point he’s fairly sure he’s never going to be able to sleep normally again, and hears sobbing.

It’s a desperate, quiet, muffled sound, and Herc takes a deep breath that mostly just serves to dishearten him as he heads into the kitchen.

Newt is muttering to himself in German between heaving sobs, sitting on top of the dinner table, legs crossed, head in his hands.

Herc feels dizzy.

“Newt,” he says not quite faintly from his place parked at the entrance to the kitchen, and Newt looks up, horrified.

Then, he lets out a watery laugh. “Hi,” he says shakily. “This isn’t what it looks like.”

“You're not in the middle of a crisis," Herc says flatly. "That's a relief."

Newt laughs, sounding lost. “Yeah, it’s exactly what it looks like, please don’t tell.”

“Who’s there to tell?” Herc mutters half to himself.

They both know, of course, but Herc can keep a few secrets. Newt looks up at Herc, and Herc does his best not to shiver with unease at the hollow look in Newt's eyes. Herc's career military, he's seen that look before, and it gets him every time. "Why all this, then?" he asks quietly.

“Oh,” Newt says hollowly. “Nothing. I just thought...It’s just lately I haven’t been that…” he trails off, searching for a word. “Good,” he finally offers, but the word doesn’t make much sense in context, at least not to Herc.

“We’ve got the car,” Herc says after a while from where he ends up sitting on the counter because he doesn't know if the table will take his weight. "No reason not to go to the psychologist.”

Newt sighs, put upon, but then shrugs. “It's not usually like this,” he says. “You know that, right? I’m usually okay.”

“’Course I know that,” Herc says gruffly. “We all have rough nights.” He exhales slowly through clenched teeth.

“I have an appointment on Friday,” Newt finally says after a few moments of sulking, swiping the back of his hand over his eyes and succeeding in miserably smearing the remains of his tears around.

“I’ll take you, no problem. I said I would.”

Newt doesn’t smile, but his mouth does something of a wobble that gets close. As he exits the kitchen, he turns and says, “ _Please_ don’t tell.”

“We all have rough nights," Herc repeats.

Newt throws out a shaky smile and thumbs up and heads upstairs.

Herc takes Newt to the psychologist and he emerges quiet and pale, but he seems a bit less on edge over the next few days.

The last week of February, Mako and Raleigh start school.

Raleigh’s incredibly enthusiastic, says he’s going for a Psych degree. Mako decides on Engineering.

The first day they get back, Raleigh’s beside himself with excitement as he shoves a couple of books at Newt and Hermann, who are working at the kitchen table.

“This is _amazing,_ ” Raleigh crows, chuckling gleefully.

Newt looks at him with vague concern before grabbing one of the books. “Hey, this old thing.”

Hermann wrinkles his nose, grabbing the other book. “ _This_ old thing,” he says derisively.

Herc wanders over to the table and chuckles at the textbooks, the one for Biology that loudly proclaims that its co-author was Dr. Newton Geiszler and the one for mathematics that seems to have been mostly written by one Dr. Hermann Gottlieb.

“ _Man_ ,” Newt marvels. “I was like sixteen when I finished this. I was on my Neuropsychology degree.”

“You never told me you did that,” Raleigh says with interest.

“He did many things,” Hermann intones dryly. “I’m not surprised he didn’t mention it; do any of us really have the time?”

Newt, picture of maturity as usual, sticks out his tongue. “Yeah, and when’d you get a chance to do this?” he asks, tapping the brown cover of the Gottlieb-authored text.

“I started when I was fourteen, after finishing my dissertation, and, evidently like you, finished when I was sixteen. I found it quite soothing.”

“’Course you did,” Herc grumbles amiably, trying not to wonder about how he came to share a house with two men who wrote college level texts before they were twenty.

Then the ideas he’s had about books come back to him and because it’s not like he’s bored stiff of tiny paperback thrillers but he could do with some more reading material, he says, “Tomorrow I’m taking the car to the city to get some books.”

The others look up at him with interest. Raleigh grins. “Good idea, I’ll go with you. We can all go out; don’t we need to get some furniture?”

They do. They have to do all of those things they said they’d do until January came along and things got hard, now that March is getting closer.

“What do you want to get?” Newt asks curiously.

“Thought I’d set aside the thrillers for a while and get back to the classics. I read a lot when I was younger, and now, well.” Herc pauses for a moment. “I’ve got time.”

Newt nods seriously, and then brightens. “We can all go! I bet it’ll be easier than grocery shopping.”

Herc chuckles. “I hope so. We all need to do something fun.”

The others agree quietly, all except for Hermann who looks at Herc like he’s said something outrageous, and Herc heads over to the living room to wait for Tendo’s call, which comes around eleven minutes later than usual. Herc hates to admit he was counting the minutes, but it’s the kind of thing he does now.

“Hey,” Tendo mumbles, sounding exhausted.

“Hey, mate,” Herc says. “Kid keep you up all night?”

“Nope, I kept me up all night. I just…” Tendo lets out a rueful little laugh. “I get nightmares too.”

Herc sighs heavily. “I’m not surprised. You know you can call if you need to, whenever you need to, right? There’s always someone awake here.”

Tendo’s silent for a long time. “Thanks, Herc. Seriously, thanks, it’s good to hear that. I’m…look, I’m sorry, but I’m tired and I’m pretty sure that Raleigh and Mako must be waiting for me, but could you tell them I’m not gonna make it to the phone tonight?”

“No problem.”

“Tell them I’m busy. Just don’t tell them I’m fallible, ‘kay?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Thanks,” Tendo says again, groaning.

“I found one of those bereavement groups you were talking about,” Herc says, because he did, looked it up at the same time he was looking at whiteboards and chalkboards for Hermann and Newt, just out of curiosity, just to check if those groups did exist. There’s a community center in town, pretty near the house, that has parental bereavement support groups (and Herc just wonders why they can’t just call it grief). “I’m thinking of going,” he continues, surprising himself.

He hadn’t been thinking of going—baring his soul to strangers isn’t his thing—until now and even now it’s just so that Tendo can feel at least a little better. Herc knows Tendo, and he knows that he likes it when people follow his advice.

“Hey, that’s great,” and Herc can practically feel Tendo’s tired smile through the line. “Think I’m gonna hang up now, though.”

“No problem. Get some rest.”

“Aye, aye, cap’n,” Tendo practically slurs, and then pauses. “And Herc? I hope you’re feeling better.”

He hangs up before Herc can answer, but it feels good that he knows his answer in his gut: _I am._ He’s been slowly getting better for months, despite January, and his showers aren’t so fucking long anymore.

He communicates to Mako and Raleigh that Tendo can’t speak to them today, and Mako looks concerned. “Is he all right?”

“Yeah,” Newt chimes in. “He usually calls us some time every Sunday, but not today.”

“He’s fine,” Herc reassures them. “Just busy.”

He grabs an apple from the bowl on the counter and heads to the living room to work on a Sudoku puzzle. Chuck made fun of him for liking those things, said he was obviously an old man if he did, and Herc always rolled his eyes because at least he never got as bored as Chuck did when there was downtime.

Max lies on his feet while he works, and by the time Herc’s done with his puzzle—it’s a difficult one this time—everybody’s spread around the living room, it’s around ten o’ clock, and somehow Herc’s actually tired.

Going to sleep at ten isn’t going to make him feel less old, but he decides to go for it anyway. Who knows the next time he’ll be able to sleep.

“Heading to bed,” he grunts as he gets up and Newt takes his vacated seat on the couch next to Hermann, and everybody makes noises to reassure him that they heard him.

Herc stops for a second before leaving the room, looking at everybody, Mako and Raleigh listening to music together, Newt reading a book next to Hermann, who’s jotting something down in a notebook, and he smiles.

It’s comfortable here.

The next day, they head out to the city. Raleigh’s great at driving, and even Hermann, who loathes cars of any kind, seems to find it satisfactory, and everything goes smoothly by the time they’re actually in the bookstore.

And then Herc steps inside, and is hit both by the smell of books and by his memories.

He’ll always regret not spending as much time as he could have with his son when Chuck was a boy, but he does remember, in those ten years before the Kaiju attacked Sydney, that he was the one who would take Chuck to bookstores, that that was one of the things they did purely with each other.

They’d spend whole days in different stores, exploring the shelves, and Herc would answer any and all of Chuck’s questions with a patience he didn’t normally have.

When he was very small, Chuck would sit quietly and listen to storytime, and then spend the rest of the day running around looking at books and then, not too many years later, reading them. He learned quicker than Herc did when he was a boy, quicker than Scott did too. Herc was so proud when a note from Chuck’s teacher came home saying that he was the best reader in class.

And now that Herc’s here, in this store with its dark wooden bookcases and its piles of hardcovers and paperbacks, he remembers.

He remembers that war stories fascinated Chuck but those were the only non-fiction he read, that Chuck, as a child, liked fiction better, loved mysteries and science-fiction and especially fantasy. He could never get enough of dragons, could never get enough of knights saving the day. He loved King Arthur’s stories, any of them.

Herc read him the entirety of _The Once and Future King_ stretched out for months, a half hour every day before bed, and then Chuck re-read the book over and over again.

Herc ends up skipping the classics section and stops at the fantasy section of the store instead, running his fingers along the spines of every single one of the books and wishing Chuck hadn’t stopped reading fiction after Sydney, noting each one of Chuck’s favorites, before finally stopping and pulling one out.

And that’s when he remembers in blue and white, being in this store during their trip to Boston, and Chuck laughing and saying it was amazing because it was so big and the books were so cheap, and showing Herc the huge fantasy section with an enthusiasm that he rarely demonstrated even before Angela died. _Look, dad,_ Herc can hear echoing in his head, and he closes his eyes to get at the memory more clearly. _Look!_

Herc feels a hot tear drip down his cheek and onto the cover of the hardbound version of _The Once and Future King_ he’s holding. He ought to read it again. He barely remembers how it went, but he remembers the way Chuck’s eyes lit up when hearing of those adventures.

He opens his eyes.


End file.
